Elam spent his first night in the city at a hostel on Market Street — eight dollars for a bunk in a room of six. Five other bunks were occupied by people who snored in different languages. One smelled of whiskey. Another talked in his sleep in Spanish.
Elam lay on a thin mattress, wrapped in his own jacket (the blanket seemed suspicious), and stared at the ceiling. Outside the window — something he'd never seen: electric light at night. Not candles, not kerosene — a million electric lights that turned night into something strange, halfway between day and dark. No stars, no moon — just an orange glow on the sky.
He didn't sleep until four in the morning. Not from fear — from overload. His brain, accustomed to silence, cows, and rhythmic work, was trying to digest the information he'd received in eight hours in the city, and was choking on it.
In the morning he went walking.
Independence Hall — where they signed the Declaration of Independence. Elam knew this from school, but standing before the real building was different. People were taking photos. Elam had never seen so many cameras — every other person had one. Why so many photographs? The Amish don't take photos — that's vanity. But the English, it seemed, couldn't exist without proof they'd been somewhere.
Reading Terminal Market — a huge covered bazaar. Elam found an Amish stand — familiar faces, familiar food. A woman in a kapp sold whoopie pies and pretzels. She looked at him — in jeans and baseball cap — and recognized him. Not him specifically, but the type. Young Amish on Rumspringa. She saw them every week.
"Hungry?" she asked in Pennsylvania German.
"Ja," he said, and that 'ja' was like a gulp of water in a desert — his own language, his own word, his own sound.
She gave him a pretzel for free. He wanted to pay. She shook her head.
"Iss," she said. Eat.
By the evening of the second day, he tried a hamburger.
It was at a fast-food place on a corner — McDonald's, golden arches, the smell of frying oil. Elam stood in line studying the picture menu, because the names meant nothing to him. Big Mac. Quarter Pounder. McNuggets. The language of food he didn't know.
"What'll you have?" asked the cashier, chewing gum.
"That," he pointed at a burger photo.
He sat at a plastic table and unwrapped the paper. With both hands. Took a bite.
The bun — soft, sweet, nothing like the bread Mother baked. The meat — flat, hot, with a taste he couldn't identify (later he learned: smoke flavoring). Ketchup. Onion. Pickle. All together — loud. Exactly that: the food was loud. Too much flavor at once, too much salt, too much sugar. As if someone were shouting into your mouth.
He finished it. Not because he liked it — because he was hungry and because throwing away food was a sin that Rumspringa didn't excuse.
That evening, lying in the hostel, he thought about Mother's food. Eggs with herbs from the garden. Sourdough bread whose crust crackled so loud you could hear it from the hallway. Apple butter — thick, brown, with cinnamon. Cornmeal mush with butter.
He thought: perhaps the first thing to learn about the world is that the food is worse.
On the third day he found work.
A construction crew on the north side — renovating an old house. The foreman, an Italian named Tony, looked at his hands — wide, calloused, the hands of a man who'd held a hammer since age five — and hired him without questions.
"Know how to hang drywall?"
"No. But I can lay brick, set rafters, and cut wood."
Tony grunted.
"Amish?"
"Ja. I mean — yes."
"I had an Amish kid two years ago. Best worker I ever had. Worked like a machine. Left after three months, went back to his people. Said it was too noisy."
Elam started the next day. Twelve dollars an hour — cash, no papers, no taxes. Tony didn't ask and Elam didn't tell.
The work was familiar — wood, tools, physical labor. But the people were different. They cursed (profanity Elam heard for the first time and whose meanings he didn't understand). They smoked (a smell that made him nauseous). They played radio on the site — loud, continuous, music that wasn't music but rhythmic shouting.
But they were kind to him. In their way, rough, clumsy — but kind. Shared lunch. Showed him tools he didn't know. Didn't laugh at his accent (or laughed, but not cruelly).
Elam worked and thought: the outside world isn't evil. Just very, very loud.